Synthetic Guitar

I found this synthetic guitar-like sound on my Roland Juno-106, tweaked it a little bit, and then ran it through some delay and reverb. The envelope gives it a similar sound to an electric guitar played clean. If I wanted it to sound more realistic I would stagger the attacks and perhaps distort the signal, but I like the synthetic nature of it. If I wanted a realistic guitar, then I’d record some guitar. Imitating acoustic or even most electro-mechanical instruments with synthesizers is something that was a necessary step in the evolution of synthesis and modeling. These days we appreciate how synthesis sounds apart from the modeling and reproduction of traditional instrumentation.

Juno-106 Synthetic Guitar

Upward Moving Arpeggio

I produced this arpeggio on the Casio CZ-1000 using an upward pattern over several octaves.

CZ1000 Upward Arpeggio

Portamento Pattern

This pattern at 122 beats per minute was produced on the Roland Juno-106 with the portamento enabled.

Portamento Pattern

Lost and Found Arpeggiated Polysynth

I found this arpeggio that I created in Ableton Live and rendered on the Roland Juno-106, in a temporary folder weeks after I had deleted it from the set I was working on. I listened to it and decided it was worthwhile using it for today’s synthesizer sound. It includes some nice manual filter sweeps as well as some other tweaks. I added an un-synched delay to give it some depth, but that was it for processing.

Lost Arpeggio Passage

Mystery Synthesized Sound #1

On a few occasions during the One Sound Every Day project I presented a sound without any explanation and left it to the readers to guess at what it was and where it came from. Bragging rights went to the first reader to get it right and post their answer in a comment.

So here’s a mystery sound for you. You can tell it’s a recording of synthesized drums, but from where? What device made this beat?

Clue: I’ve used it on a couple of mixes that I have posted on ACB. Bonus goes to anyone who can identify exactly what device it was.

Mystery Analog Drums